


one of these nights (rewind and remix)

by koyori



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Car Accidents, Character Study, Dialogue Heavy, Experimental Style, Explicit Sexual Content, Gore, Internal Conflict, M/M, Non-Chronological, Non-Explicit Sex, Non-Linear Narrative, References to Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-15
Updated: 2016-06-15
Packaged: 2018-07-15 04:56:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7208645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/koyori/pseuds/koyori
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sasaki Haise is a wonderful mentor, so they say. Sasaki Haise is excellent at his job, of course. Sasaki Haise is happy, says everyone.</p><p>A portrait of an unfinished relationship. What happened at the Christmas party stays unspoken.</p>
            </blockquote>





	one of these nights (rewind and remix)

_(one: beyond the milky way)_

On good mornings when Tokyo is not eaten by fog and clouds and rain, Haise opens the windows of the Chateau and lets the clean air in. He hauls the blinds up and throws the shutters open, fighting a lone crusade beneath the banner of good health, ignoring Saiko’s protests when she points at the TV and says that the sun is too bright, and she can’t see her video game because of the glare, and can’t Maman just close the curtains, it’s winter, it’s so cold today.

“Play in your room, then,” he answers, “Or better yet, help with some chores and clean the screen – that way you won’t see all the finger marks.”

She pouts but she takes the bottle of Windex he offers. “Maman’s being mean today,” she mutters.

“Scientifically speaking, you should open the windows when it’s raining, not when it’s sunny,” Urie says, leaning back in his chair with socked feet propped high on the dining table. The dining table that Haise just finished wiping down. “The rain rinses pollution out of the air, which lowers overall particulate levels.”

He pulls out his phone and pretends to read, but Haise isn’t fooled – not by Urie’s feigned nonchalance, and especially not by those smugly tethered eyebrows. Shirazu stares at Urie with awe and irritation mingling clear on his face, Saiko ignores him, and Haise bites his tongue so a retort doesn’t accidentally slip out. The words build on his tongue, ugly things. Ugly like the shade over the windows when rain comes and the high gray of night storms blots out the moon.

This house is dark enough as it is, Haise could tell him. This house, with its swooping ceiling and dark walls, with its glass façade so modern, so sleek and clean – this house is cold enough as it is. Why should he let the rain in, allow the damp to eat away every ounce of light and warmth that he’s worked so hard to imbue this room with? Never mind that the homeliness is created by the fragrance of food he cannot eat, by books that appear wrinkled but smell too new. Never mind that the prints on the wall are store bought, rustic hand-painted goodness that came with a sticker labeled 3000 yen that he cut off once at home, ignoring that the ridges and flecks of pigment were printed in careful polyethylene aliquots and not laid by a human hand.

Instead he smiles and says, “Can’t I get any respect around my own house?”

Subversion is how he is answered, when even the weather decides to disrespect him by mid-afternoon. Clouds stack upon one another when Haise peers out the window after training, towering piles of puffed white that belie their true nature. “Cumulonimbus,” Mutsuki reads, the word coming out crushed between his lips and tongue, consonants mingling together in a soft mass. “Also known as thunderheads, these form along a cold front and are capable of producing thunder and lightning.”

“Come help me gather up the laundry,” Haise calls.

Mutsuki scrambles, and _Introductory Meteorology_ is left forgotten on the table. _Better that way_ , thinks Haise.

Saiko rejoices when she ventures out of her room and finds the windows clamped and the curtains drawn, the television screen turned matte black again. Haise manages to return her smile with his own, one that he has hastily cobbled together from his plentiful reservoir of artificial good cheer. Serving dishes and cutlery clink together as they sit down, a false family, complete with Urie’s empty chair – Urie performing his duty as the obligatory prodigal son. Haise feels a burst of absurd admiration for Urie, for committing so thoroughly to his chosen role.

“Winter’s supposed to be the dry season,” Shirazu says with his mouth full.

“It’s not cold enough for snow,” Mutsuki answers.

 _Why are we still talking about the weather?_ Haise wonders. _How un-familial._

“But I want snow!” Saiko stabs the air with her fork, sending a short arc of gravy racing through the air to land, fortunately, back on her own plate.

“Next week is Christmas,” Haise interrupts, trying to change the subject. “I’m thinking of inviting some of our CCG coworkers to the Chateau -”

He has a litany of reasons and platitudes prepared and saved to his heart, ready to recite a moment’s notice, but his announcement is met by nods and approval all around, and then by silence. “Ok,” Haise says. “So that’s good, then.”

Mutsuki and Urie look grateful for the sudden lull, while Saiko and Shirazu devour their food with little regard for decorum, etiquette, or napkins. Only Haise fidgets. The quiet consumes him; with quiet there is nothing left to stifle the thread of unease that gnaws at him from inside, nothing to suppress the static fuzz of forgotten memories and old itching in his bones.

He scrubs the Chateau like his life depends on it, paranoid that they will notice.

 

_(five: one of these days, one of these years)_

Winter sunlight sets Arima’s office windows aglow, with a rosy hue just teasing of gold. The plain panes are turned to white-on-white stained glass, transformed by clinging layers of blossom-like frost. Haise admires nature’s handiwork from his seat on the low couch, his gaze drifting between the different ice formations, watching drip trails cut through the patterns as light melts them away.

Arima’s lips are moving. “Sorry, could you repeat that?” Haise asks.

“You seem distracted.”

“Well.” Haise laughs, trying to cover up the tremor in his voice. “It’s just – this is the first – since, ah, the party. I guess there’s – there’s a lot on my mind, yes.”

“Is there?”

“You’re like a mirror,” Haise says. “You know that, right?”

Arima changes the subject. “I overheard one of the Quinx talking to the doctor yesterday. The fat one.”

“Yonebayashi,” Haise offers, but weakly. Arima has no tact, it’s true. “Isn’t that a breach of doctor-patient confidentiality?”

“She was talking about an accident. A truck that ran over a pedestrian?”

“I don’t think it was ghoul-linked,” Haise blurts out. “Just – random.”

“She said you were there too.” Arima steeples his fingers. “And you’ve now confirmed that.”

“Yes. Yes, I was.” Of all things, this is what Arima chooses to interrogate him over? Haise almost stands up; he tenses his legs and tries but he can’t bring himself to push away from his seat. “It was tragic.”

“Random incidents have a way of making us regard our lives differently,” says Arima, so soft that Haise can barely hear him over the blasting heater. “They make us stop and question our worth, our place in the world. Our purpose.”

“I, I suppose, yes.”

“Haise, you know -” There’s a little hitch in Arima’s inhale, the sound of a man catching himself from saying an unfortunate thing at the last second, “You know that counseling services at the CCG are discreet.”

He does stand up this time. “Telling me that, after you just admitted to spying on Yonebayashi’s appointment? Give me a break,” Haise says, and he notices with dispassion that he sounds angrier than he is. “Have you been spying on all my subordinates this week, too? Just to show me how omnipresent you can be?”

“Haise -”

“No. I don’t – look, after the party, that was a mistake. That was – that was my mistake.” He turns away and faces the door. “I’m sorry.”

_I’m sorry, and it scares me when you care. Because I know you’re pretending to._

_He is pretending_ , echoes the Other in his head. _He’s good at that._

Deep breaths. This isn’t – this is Arima. He’s never been angry at Arima. Sasaki Haise has never been angry at Arima, ever.

“Sorry,” Haise echoes himself. “For losing my temper -”

When he turns around Arima is right there behind him, apparently having moved three meters across the tile floor soundless in the space of a sentence. He leans to Haise, over him, until they are face to face and drawing closer by the second. Time slows to a trickle where Haise’s perception is concerned, as Arima draws closer, ever closer. There should be warm breath on his face but Haise feels nothing, forgets the word altogether as he makes eye contact with Arima, looking into eyes the deep color of glacial cores. Winter is his season, undeniably.

Only when Arima pulls away does it occur to Haise, that maybe he hadn’t felt warmth because Arima was holding his breath, too.

“Arima -” he starts.

“That’ll be all,” says Arima. “Have a good holiday.”

 

_(two: everything stops for us in that moment)_

Saiko spins, catching snowflakes on her tongue, nearly knocking her hat off her head. The ends of her scarf twirl out and smack Haise in the chest, pom-poms skittering down his jacket front.

“So-orry,” she sings, reaching up to adjust her hat. Wearing thick mittens, she tries to grip the edge but her fingers slip off every time.

“Do you want help?” Haise asks, after watching her for a bit.

She makes a little whining sound in the back of her throat. “Please?”

So she says, but Saiko still manages to pout as Haise makes his best efforts to fix her hat. The pink ball of fluff sewn to the top smacks right into his chest when he lets go, thread unraveling in a tangle of spidery white.

“Saiko,” he tries to tell her, “Your hat needs fixing -”

But’s hard to be heard in the populated street, where every passerby’s arms are laden with shopping bags and everyone shuffles along at the same brisk pace, too polite to walk too fast or too slow. They pause at a crosswalk, and Haise feels the strangest impulse to reach out and hold Saiko’s hand like they’re in elementary school students learning to cross the road for the first time. The pom-pom on her hat bounces rhythmically against his shoulder, now dangling by a thread.

The light shifts from red to green. Buoyed by the tide of bodies, Haise stumbles forward and onto the street, tripping on the curb, and just manages to avoid a fall by hanging onto the closest shoulder. The woman he grabbed isn’t Saiko – she jerks away with eyes narrowed in clear disgust; he ducks his head and apologizes profusely. But then where’s – where is Saiko?

He scans the crowds, eyes jittering back and forth. Where is Saiko? Where is she?

The pink bobble catches his attention. “Saiko!” Haise shouts. “Yonebayashi -” He wishes that he held her hand while crossing the street earlier. The little hairs on the back of his neck are straining, every fiber of his being tensed in unknown alarm.

The wind shifts direction, and on instinct Haise begins to run. There is burning rubber in the air, acrid and deathlike in his nose and on his tongue, and his ears are ringing. In two, three strides Haise catches up to her, and Saiko cries out as she is tackled, but he’s desperate. He would rather have her hurt by his hands rather than injured by the truck that materializes out of nowhere from behind them, a hulk of screeching metal against asphalt, moving too slow and too fast all at once. The pedestrians on the crosswalk scream and separate, most sprinting for the safety of the sidewalk.

While he waits for Saiko to catch her breath, Haise sneaks a glance at the wreckage, now sprawled across two crosswalks. The undercarriage is a crumpled mess, long sheets of metal twisted like a cheap candy wrapper. Between the slowly spinning front wheels blooms a painter’s palette of gore, a bouquet in every shade of scarlet dripping from still-smoking tires. A spot of pink decorates the road just beside the truck, pressed into a perfect circle. Saiko’s pom-pom, fallen in action.

He fights it, but morbid curiosity draws him to his feet nevertheless, and Haise rises to view the carnage as though an invisible hand presses at his back.

The body that rests in the middle of the road has a hand curled ever so neatly around the flattened pink remains of Saiko’s hat bobble. The right leg bends forward at the knee in a gruesomely impossible angle, a corpse lying peaceful, unrecognizable in mutilation. Tire treads cross the thighs and the face, and with skull fragments scattered like shards of pottery on a concrete canvas, Haise thinks, with some relief, that at least the last moments of this victim might have been swift. Shrapnel has embedded in and torn through the abdomen, leaving long lines of intestines to trail in parallel with the tire tracks on the street. Yellow, Haise notes with some detached interest. The innards are yellow, as if the corpse was considerate enough to set out its own caution tape before imminent demise.

There’s a hint of silver around the neck, and upon closer examination Haise can see telltale signs of a crucifix, bloodstained but still intact. He turns his face to the sky, and wonders which god is watching from above. _Perhaps this person’s god has welcomed their soul already_ , he thinks, _in which case, good for them._ A soul in heaven, finally freed from its weak sack of flesh and blood and bones – what a stupid god, to have placed a soul in such an ugly vessel to begin with, a vessel now pulverized and liquefied across two crosswalks in Chiyoda.

 _Or maybe_ , a white-haired boy whispers in the back of his skull, _God doesn’t exist at all._ Because what god stands by and allows random passerby to be crushed by four thousand kilos of wayward metal? What god allows the innocent to fall prey to pain and suffering by chance? _What God?_

 

_(four: even in dreams)_

Arima’s hand rests, large and solid, on his thigh. The other raises a finger to the seam of Haise’s trousers and pauses; Haise jerks forward, frustration pushing his lips open and raising air high in his lungs. Vocal folds singing in a breathless atonality. His voice hits glass and streams back to fill his eardrums, an irregular echo that makes him dizzy. It’s cramped, here in the backseat of Arima’s sedan.

One second he was kissing Arima in the hallway, long after everyone else left the party; the next he was being pulled by the wrist into the night. Stumbling after Arima in the night and the dark – everything gray because of cloud cover obscuring the moon, the streetlamps a far and distant thought – only the firm grasp on his wrist anchoring him to ground. _Anchoring, as Arima has done for three years now_ , thinks Haise. Arima has been his beacon in the distance, his green light on the dock, a steadfast guidepost through all of it.

And even now.

He buries his face in Arima’s neck, hands seeking and sliding on cold shirt buttons. Haise is all limbs and awkward angles, molded into queer formations because of the tight space; he sits astride Arima with just an inch of air between their bodies. His skin crawls with every dust mote, the hypersensitivity sending him into overdrive, the juncture of his legs pressing insistent into Arima’s palm.

Arima does a – a thing – with his hand, and Haise jerks, his head colliding with the back window, cold glass jolting unpleasantly against the back of his neck. He’s pressed a clear spot into the condensation; he can feel wetness on his nape. Not that it matters anyway, there is no moon, no stars to see tonight. He dreams, of floating freeform through time and space and the Milky Way.

God, he just wants to – he desires what he can’t speak of, can’t describe. All Haise knows is that what is here right now is so slow, too slow. He wants Arima to take him already. Break him red rubbed raw inside, carve fire in his skin, fill him till there’s nothing but rush rip ocean roaring in his eardrums, malleus incus stapes click clack click.

On instinct he turns to kiss Arima again but he’s caught by surprise when he is interrupted, when Arima tilts his chin up with gentle fingers for better access to Haise’s neck. A cool mouth presses against Haise’s skin, sucking away the dampness under his jawline, tongue and the slightest hint of teeth against his carotid pulse. _This is good,_ Haise thinks. _This is good._ What he wants the least is for Arima to love him with sacredness, to handle him with gentle touch and feather-lightness. _I want to be used like I’m real_ , Haise admits in his head the words he can’t say aloud, _for so long I’ve been looked after as a doll._

He nods, all the affirmation that Arima needs. Through the rustle of discarded fabric neither of them speaks a word. Haise twists his arms and legs and finds space where there is none, but discomfort is a small price to pay, when on this night at long last the voices in his head have gone to ground and he exists, in however transient a moment, as himself and himself alone within the echoing cavities of his cranium, and discomfort is nothing when – oh, right there –

This time he is quiet, quiet or deaf. The thundering pulse, the rushing blood between his temples drowns it all out. Haise pants open-mouthed and, though his forehead is pressed against freezing glass, forgets to look for stars.

Arima holds him tight around the hips, down where the burn is good, so good, where it strains and brims over until heat envelops him. It crawls inside where Arima mouths at his pulse, slithers under his skin and pulses like a living thing. Haise sees the stars combusting in tight spirals on the underside of his eyelids, and mouths fractured prayers when Arima’s calloused fingers skitter down the base of his cock and over the curve of his balls.

There’s a sweetness in this slow dance that makes him grit his teeth, half in lust and half in frustration. It’s good but it could be better, and he’s impatient, he’s hungry for touch and taste and the slip-slide of sweat-drenched skin. Riding high on the rust red edge, rendered raw and overcome until he can feel it bleeding into cracking bones. He’s begging, begging Arima to fill him until he chokes, squeeze the air out and stuff the hollows, smother out the empty spaces in his heart that cry out for useless things like _God_ and _Mother_ and _Love_.

 

_(three: stay for a minute)_

Arima holds the tie clip up to the light, in lieu of actually putting it on. Haise wants to ask if he’s chosen wrong, before he realizes that Arima is no longer wearing his tie. It lies discarded atop his coat in a careless coil, a sight that warms Haise’s heart.

The idea of Arima with a beatific smile is something that he has entertained in times past, and when it happens at last he is still caught unsure. Judgment clouded, Haise watches the line of Arima’s lips press together slow and tilt, a gentle raising at the corners that overflows with sweet uncertainty.

“Thank you,” says Arima, and Haise wishes that he would smile that way more.

The Other in his head wishes that Arima would stop, stop staring with those kind eyes, those eyebrows drawn upwards in crude pastiche of gratitude and sympathy. _His face is a farce_ , hisses the Other, _a false mask worn by a cruel man._

“It’s nothing,” he laughs, helpless, as the thing in his brain claws and screams and sobs. It doesn’t cease until Arima is out the door, his black coat slung over one arm, his other hand raised in a friendly goodbye, trailing promises to visit again and soon.

 _Self-loathing is a dynamic state_ , says the thing in his head. _And so is self-deception._

Haise swallows until his mouth is dry.

_Did you think he would thank you some other way? Did you think you would make yourself useful somehow? Wanted?_

He sits at his desk writes ‘Kaneki Ken’ with different kanji until his fingers cramp around his pencil.

_With a tie pin? You’re pitiful._

His pencil lead snaps. Haise leans back in his hair and kneads at his temples.

_Did you think that you could become indispensable to God with offerings? God doesn’t exist after all. No God would put your broken soul in such an ugly container. No God will answer you, you insect sitting here scratching symbols, searching for lost histories and ghosts of yesteryear; all there is for you to find is silence, un-answers that leave you thirsting for knowledge where there is none to be had – come in under the shadow of this red rock, he said, and you did, and what did he show you –_

The doorbell rings, and Haise bolts out of his chair. He careens downwards, footsteps thudding on the stairs, not caring who he wakes in this vast house of dust and darkness.

At the door, towering, is Arima. He wears no coat, and a light dusting of snow has collected on his shoulders, white invisible on white. Haise almost makes to embrace him, but stops at the last minute. His hands, clawed at the ready, grip the doorframe instead.

“Haise?”

“Arima,” he gasps. “You came back.”

“I left my tie.”

The tie is still on the couch where it was discarded the first time. Arima picks it up, but doesn’t put it on.

“Haise,” he says. “You seem troubled.”

 _Murderer_ , cries the Other in his mind. _Killer, psychopath, liar._

“You came back,” Haise says again.

Arima’s eyelids lower a fraction, a heavy-lidded look distinct from his usual stoicism.

“Arima, do I mean something to you?” Haise asks. “I’m not drunk, by the way. You’d know if I was. But-”

“Of course.” The odd light in Arima’s eyes fades, and he takes a minute step back.

“No. No. That’s – no, not in that way.” Stuttering, he stumbles over what he means to say – he stops to breathe and tries again. “I just want to – I need to confirm -”

“Haise, I think you should -”

“Do you think of me in a – do you think of me?”

Silence falls again, so thick with tension that he can taste it. Always in the worst moments of his life, silence comes back to torment him. The thing in his head is quiet too, as if it is, too, waiting for Arima’s answer.

Arima speaks for the first time in what seems like forever, falling into the heart of light, the silence. “How should I think of you?”

The distance between them seems an eternity, but he crosses it anyways.

 _I could not speak,_ Haise remembers lines from a book he has read but cannot recall, _and my eyes failed –_

He has to stand on tiptoe, but he twists his hands into Arima’s shirt and presses his mouth, at an angle, against Arima’s lips. When he pulls away there is a warm hand cradling the back of his skull. A motion more intimate than any kiss, Haise thinks, his mouth wet and his head pounding. He thinks of wolves, rolling in snow and exposing their white furred throats to their leaders, wanting to yield. Wanting approval.

Arima’s palm slides around his neck and lower still, until he thumbs the hollow between Haise’s clavicles. Then back into his hair.

 _I was neither living nor dead,_ finishes the Other in his head, _and I knew nothing._

**Author's Note:**

> The title and section headings are from [One of These Nights](https://youtu.be/jzr3GUGbaoA) by Red Velvet. The car accident in section two is inspired by Sasaki's [birthday poem](http://makyun.tumblr.com/post/142304959237/i-want-to-disappear).
> 
> I wanted to experiment with a format that is literally the opposite of "in medias res" - i.e., a story that begins at the ends and ends in the middle. So the sections are numbered in chronological order, but they are arranged in "reading order," an order that ends with what I think is an emotional climax.
> 
> Also, I'm working on updates to other fics, but it's doubtful that I'll finish anything, because of how busy I am this summer. Still, as always, thank you for reading.


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